3. Merkel and Trump at the G20 meeting in Hamburg, July 2017. October 2015: Iraqi Kurdish men carry the body of one of 71 asylum seekers suffocated in an Austrian lorry. “There is in Germany,” says Wolfgang Bosbach, a long serving CDU MP, “a decades old advertising slogan which everyone knows and it applies to Angela Merkel too - It’s better to stick with what one has. Planning the future of a European Union without the UK. “She relies on her immense reputation as one of the world’s longest serving leaders,” says Wolfgang Bosbach. To coin the phrase often employed by Merkel herself to defend her nuclear and economic policies, Germany found itself “alternativlos” (without alternative). The Berlin Wall was falling. She has always made an awkward hand gesture – thumb and fingertips pressing together to create a diamond shape. Much depends on her successor as party leader. While the Greens appear to have benefited from the SPD's slump in support, it seems clear that the centre-right has lost voters to the AfD. Germany’s Angela Merkel has said she will step down as chancellor in 2021, following recent election setbacks. Germany is home to around three million people of Turkish descent. But the vultures are circling. The two leaders were unable to push through the doomed US/European trade deal TTIP but they did build a transatlantic alliance which bound Europe and America together. ... representatives of the coalition played down the rebellion. Her mother is a very lovely woman who is loved by everyone.”. She has a very good sense of humour but, as soon as the cameras roll, you don’t see it.”. The scandal over bypassing tests on diesel cars casts a shadow still. Merkel opposed this development but the closure of the Balkan route was a political lifeline. I remember how [former French President Francois] Hollande was photographed at night on his scooter going to see his girlfriend. He was a KGB officer stationed in Dresden, in the east, and speaks German. Its xenophobic rhetoric and nationalist fervour repulsed many Germans. It’s the end of an era as later this year, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel will step down from her position after serving the country for 15 long years, and as one of the de-facto leaders of Europe, now her party has appointed a new leader. It's a good result and I'm happy with it." Germany has taken the unprecedented step of summoning the American ambassador to the capital Berlin to discuss allegations that the US security services monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. Instead, Germany was now the humanitarian face of Europe. Critics argue that the terms of the resulting Minsk agreement have never actually been met. “Many here expected that, when Angela became chancellor, Templin would blossom. And Friedrich Merz, a former leader of the CDU-CSU parliamentary group and an old rival to Mrs Merkel, has thrown his hat into the ring. 24 June 2016: Merkel arrives at a press conference to give her reaction to the UK referendum. Audio, Suffrajitsu: Fighting for women's rights. Germany is paying $1m a year for the privilege of hosting the bears. If anything, Brexit – or at least dealing with the fallout - has strengthened Angela Merkel domestically. Nevertheless, Merkel has never regretted the decision she made in the late summer of 2015 - although she’s made it clear that the year which followed will never be repeated. She grew up in East Germany where she learned to speak Russian. Once when she announced the “energiewende” - her decision to end nuclear power in Germany following the crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan in 2011. She has held the post since 2000. It was 1997 and she’d held the environment portfolio for three years. That’s part skill and part fortune. In less than 10 years she’d gone from helping out in the office of the then-Democratic Awakening (which would later evolve into the modern day Christian Democratic Union) to party spokeswoman and was now rising through the ranks of Helmut Kohl’s cabinet under the tutelage of the chancellor himself. “Half-closed eyes. 5. Their pessimism was vindicated as the party suffered two humiliating regional election defeats - one of them in Merkel’s own home state of Mecklenburg Vorpommen. The global challenges make for a daunting agenda - an erratic US administration, migration and trafficking, Syria, Ukraine. Andreas Kluth, editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt, wrote recently that the chancellor’s body language, undramatic as it is, subtly exudes power and control. When she visits Greece, protesters wearing Nazi uniforms march through the streets of Athens, and yet a word from Merkel can also mean saving a euro country from bankruptcy.”, A 2012 protest in Athens against EU austerity measures depicts Merkel as Hitler. Parties like the left-leaning Greens and the far-right, anti-immigration AfD have grown in national support following the 2017 general election, as backing for the major centre parties has waned. Germans are known to stick to their traditions and ideologies.”. She knows she barely survived the migrant crisis - voters want a clear integration and asylum policy. A migrant camp in Lesbos Greece - numbers have dropped since a 2016 EU/Turkey deal, “At the last minute it stopped,” says Norbert Röttgen. Merkel is also preoccupied by, and expected by many to shape, the future of a post-Brexit EU. The announcement is intended to silence critics in her party and win back the voters who have deserted the CDU in favour of parties like AfD and the Greens, but it also reflects her dwindling grip on power. He referred to his protégée as his “mädchen”. While her political strategy is, he says, like that of a good chess player, Merkel is also a politician of scruples. Meng Meng and Jiao Qing are on loan from China. Merkel ended up leading the party for 18 years, stepping down in late 2018. When Merkel discovered in 2013 that American spies had listened in to her mobile phone, she was furious. “All eyes in Europe are directed at Merkel. A win by Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats in the German elections has wider implications for the future of the EU, says the BBC's William Horsley. Or maybe it was the discovery, days earlier, of the decomposing corpses of 71 asylum seekers in the back of a lorry on an Austrian motorway. While not without imperfections and challenges, the institution is viewed as broadly beneficial politically and economically. A furious crowd had gathered. But her electorate were increasingly unconvinced. – Dutch government literally resigned today. It horrified Germany. After Donald Trump’s election, horrified by his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border, Merkel was quick to remind him of his duty to uphold Western values - “democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity” regardless of “ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or political conviction”. PM: NHS Test and Trace helping 'restart our lives', Morgan stands by Meghan criticism after GMB exit, The invention that made mass vaccinations possible, Satellite images show Equatorial Guinea destruction, Talking to men about bras can be 'awkward' VideoTalking to men about bras can be 'awkward', Syria: Two women, 10 years on. The two giant pandas chewed impassively on their bamboo, apparently oblivious to the global significance of the piece of diplomatic theatre being performed right in front of their new enclosure at Berlin Zoo. Her political fortunes have risen, fallen and risen again. She has indicated support for French President Emmanuel Macron’s ambition for deeper integration within the Eurozone, although hopes for a renewed Franco-German axis at the heart of Europe are fading somewhat as Macron’s domestic popularity leaches away. Diplomatic relations – never easy – reached a new low when a number of German nationals, including several journalists, were detained in Turkey. As Merkel predicted, the migrant crisis has changed Germany. It has often been ridiculed but is now being perceived differently. As Angela Merkel steps down from her party leadership, Newsnight go to Germany to ask what it might mean for the country and for Europe. Her father, a Lutheran pastor, moved his family here from Hamburg not long after Angela was born. “Sometimes I feel she’s embarrassed when the public find that out about her. One of Sakurai’s most recent offerings presents Merkel as an amoeba, changing her political shape, swallowing up the ideas first presented by opposition parties. An unflattering verb entered the German lexicon in 2015 - “to Merkel”, which denotes indecisiveness. But, according to her former environment minister Norbert Röttgen, this was “not so much a moral or ethical question but – and this is typical for her – a decision based on facts. Those who promised a patriotic spring here never fully realised their ambitions. And, quietly, in her office in Berlin, Angela Merkel gets on with her job. In her place stood the mächtig - the mighty. She grew up in East Germany, far removed from democracy, which is why she perceives her life in reunited Germany as a gift and she wants to show gratitude to this country and give back in return for the freedom and rights she received after the Wall came down.”. The Merkel brand became so tarnished that some within the party began to cast about for alternatives to lead them into the next general election. "...but as soon as the cameras roll, you don’t see it.”. Both had long term consequences. And it was here, in January 2017, that hopes of a very different union briefly flared. Merkel may not have been among those who, on that November night in 1989, stood next to the Wall and sang as it fell. And there are unsettling stories too. But her interior minister was worried, fearing a backlash. Quietly reinforcing new global alliances in the stormy wake of Donald Trump’s chaotic administration. To keep Brexit as clean as possible - Britain is an important partner and a break which damages its economy will adversely affect Germany too. Both decisions have defined her politically though at a cost to her reputation and popularity. The Russian leader later apologised but over the years the story has come to symbolise a fractious relationship. Confronted by Britain’s decision to leave the EU, Merkel’s initial reaction was to present a united front. It was a decision that would come back to haunt Merkel later - decades on newspapers would print pictures of her as a teenager, dressed in the uniform of the regime’s Free German Youth movement. These days, her unwavering stance, and her continued insistence that Germany did the right thing, appears to help rather than hinder her popularity.